How andrew.k started their banner ad journey

Summary

The SitePoint Marketplace offers a "Promote Your Auction" image for
Auction holders to place on their site.
The current image is too large and unattractive -- we'd like something smaller,
while conveying essentially the same information.

Please see the Design Brief for complete details

What inspires you and how do you envision the design for your business?

Accepted File Formats:
Photoshop file - PSD

Branding
Including a small, unobtrusive version of the SitePoint logo is desirable. Don't worry about any artifacts from resizing the PNG logo below -- I will replace it with a correctly-sized vector export when we choose the winner

The logo colours are #003366 and #ff6600

Colours
This is a tough one -- the image needs to have some punch, but it will be displayed in a wide variety of sites. I'll leave this up to individual interpretation.

Design Constraints
The final image will be generated with PHP (GD2). For the sake of my sanity, please work within the following limitations:

- Only use Verdana
- No drop shadows or other effects on text.
- No rounded corners on the image

Text does not have to be center-aligned, but keep in mind that all lines of text are an unknown length. Any Auction title that is too long will be abbreviated with a horizontal ellipsis.

Banner Text
Below are the different text combinations that will be on the banner:

What We're Replacing
Here's an example of the old Promote Your Auction banner:

We're ditching the button at the bottom the entire image is a link to the Auction.

First Try
Here's a quick design I did before we decided to make this a Design Contest:

I went overboard with gradients :)

If you have any questions, please use the comments section, not PMs to me. Thanks.